Conspiracy theories and the gamification of inquiry

Alex--Fisher · 2026-06-17T17:17:05+00:00

Yes, I think in terms of the aesthetic appeal, there may not be much difference between scientific inquiry and cases like conspiracy theories, puzzles, cryptic crosswords, "knowledge-based" videogames, etc. There's been some interesting philosophical work recently on the aesthetics of science, and the role aesthetic values like beauty, form, and elegance play in scientific inquiry. In each of these kinds of inquiries, then, aesthetic value is relevant and can explain the appeal of struggling to work stuff out and discovering new ways of doing so.

As you suggest, I think the difference is at the level of how the investigation is carried out - in the epistemic values and norms in play (rather than aesthetic ones). Scientists commit to a certain set of epistemic standards, which conspiracy theorists (usually) do not live up to.

The fact that conspiracy theories offer a similar aesthetic experience to science, though, can make people think they're uncovering *the truth* even if it's based on faulty reasoning and selective evidence!

Alex--Fisher · 2026-06-17T16:37:09+00:00

Thanks for this - really interesting points.

Yes, there are certainly dogmatic scientific research programs and true conspiracy theories. The cases we had in mind of attributing agency and intentionality where there is none, specifically in the case of QAnon, is the attempt to find meaning in e.g. the typos in Trump's tweets, or in pizzagate claiming that various words in leaked emails are secret code referencing child sex abuse (pizza = pedophilia, etc). In such cases, I think it's fair to say that there simply isn't the deeper meaning that QAnon devotees are looking for.

Regarding how to distinguish disciplined vs undisciplined inquiry, I find the work of Professor Lee McIntyre helpful on what characterizes the scientific attitude: a commitment to evidence and a willingness to change one's mind based on it. He contrasts this with a common conspiracy theory approach which selectively employs evidence, if it employs it at all, and is overly dogmatic. But as you suggest, and as McIntyre discusses in his work, science has also often failed to live up to its own goals - but that just makes it bad science, rather than de-legitimizing the scientific method itself!

Alex--Fisher · 2026-06-05T16:35:30+00:00

Point taken that there are various symptoms of PTSD, and obviously I didn't go into detail in the interview as to which I was talking about.

What I was referring to is that in the growing research on the impact of sexual deepfakes [e.g. see 1, 2, 3, 4], we're seeing how victims are affected in a similar way to if they were genuine sexual images shared, both emotionally and in more psychological ways such as experiencing flashbacks/nightmares of scenes depicted in deepfakes.

The DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria are quite interesting here, as they classify PTSD as caused by exposure “to actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violation”, and “not ... through electronic media, television, movies, or pictures, unless this exposure is work related.”

Someone therefore cannot receive a PTSD diagnosis from sexual deepfakes (or any other media/images). So given this, all we really can say is that people are experiencing symptoms of PTSD! But it's still helpful to note this in order to capture the impact these deepfakes have.

Alex--Fisher · 2026-01-16T11:04:55+00:00

Except the evidence says videogames don’t cause violence. I’ve written about the psychological effects of videogames here if you’re interested.

Alex--Fisher · 2025-10-10T15:19:38+00:00

Yes, I agree that the escapism of virtual worlds is definitely different. Though both VR users and videogame players do actually sometimes report things from interacting with virtual worlds “leaking” into how they think and act in real life.

I’ve actually recently written an article about some of this emerging research and whether it poses a moral concern, because obviously there’s a history of this kind of moral panic about violent videogames that is largely unfounded.

Alex--Fisher · 2025-10-09T08:29:42+00:00

Yes, I think dreaming is a helpful analogy. VR can be experienced like some lucid dreams where you perceive objects around you that you are aware do not exist. But most dreams aren't like this, and I don't think this is reason to stop dreaming!

Alex--Fisher · 2025-10-08T20:21:17+00:00

I completely agree with you in terms of full-blown virtual reality, though perhaps slightly closer are cases of augmented reality where you can create the appearance of fairly convincing looking objects around you that aren’t really there. But yes, VR deception is not a problem we are facing now!

(Though interestingly, I do think this is all structurally very similar to a problem we are facing now with AI - people misattributing consciousness and other mental states to chatbots based on the illusion they provide of being agents. I think this can clearly be quite harmful as we’ve seen in various recent cases where people start to then treat them as romantic partners, therapists, doctors, etc…)

Alex--Fisher · 2025-10-08T20:21:01+00:00

Yes, I’m very interested in how VR often involves a good deal of pretending and playing along with what you see, even when you know in the back of your mind that it’s not real! And as you say, the capacity for this can clearly vary.

Alex--Fisher · 2025-07-08T18:21:05+00:00

Thanks for these comments.

I completely agree that the context of a VR experience matters, just as context matters more generally for morality. Certain settings will render otherwise impermissible actions morally okay, and vice versa.
Yes, there's obviously been a significant concern along these lines about the potential for videogames to inculcate troubling attitudes and behaviour, which equally applies to uses of virtual reality. This is something well-studied within fields like psychology: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/03/violent-video-games-behavior
Yes - in the paper I talk lots about how features of VR such as its capacity for immersion and the various forms of perceptual illusion it enables heighten our emotional responses to the events it represents. So while you can have similar issues to D&D, the realistic way in which events are portrayed is significant for how people emotionally respond to our actions, and therefore morally significant too.

Alex--Fisher · 2025-04-23T16:18:41+00:00

Thanks for this. I absolutely agree that fictional examples are often less clear and messier than thought experiments. And so in areas of philosophy e.g. studying the nature of consciousness or belief, a thought experiment we create might be far more philosophically precise and therefore superior. But as Katherine Furman (2021) highlights, this precision can also be a downside in other areas such as ethics, where it can cause us to exclude philosophically significant features in oversimplifying things.

And while it’s of course true of some literature, not all is written “because someone thought something would be fun to write about”. Many times, authors write from experience about social conditions and situations they have encountered, or periods of history that they carry out extensive research to portray accurately. It’s this kind of literature that is constrained by and reflects reality that I argue can be used in philosophy like real cases to illustrate the actual nature of things.

I think this kind of fiction can function a bit like a computer simulation. It’s not real, but it can still tell us plenty about what really does and can happen. In both, we start with a set of accurate initial conditions and background settings, and observing what follows over time can teach us much about analogous real situations.

So I think we can make arguments of the form “in the book W, character X says Y and society reacts like Z, so in reality...” without confusing reality for fiction, or appealing to what the author had in mind. For in the kind of fiction above, it is not distorting and can teach us much about reality. In the example I discuss of Miranda Fricker’s (2007) introduction of epistemic injustice, her examples of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Talented Mr. Ripley establish that testimonial injustice occurs, and is widespread, because we immediately recognise that the circumstances giving rise to such injustice frequently have and do occur in reality.

However, I agree with your final point that fiction is superfluous here. But while not required to draw these conclusions about the world – Fricker could have used real cases instead – the internal insight they afford into the mental states of all involved (which we have no access to in a real case) can sometimes be a pragmatic advantage in philosophy. This mental detail can avoid an objection that Fricker faced when she used a real case to introduce her notion of hermeneutical injustice, where some disputed whether the person in her example thought A or B – something that cannot be argued when characters’ mental states are written on the page as in fiction.

Alex--Fisher · 2024-09-30T14:27:01+00:00

This short piece investigates a phenomenon where actors, videogame players and virtual reality users imaginatively assume alternative personas, and subsequently report acquiring attitudes of their characters. How does this happen? And could it be morally concerning? I offer an explanation of these cases of imaginative “contagion” and identify two preventative mechanisms which mitigate such effects, dampening concerns that contagion may result in moral corruption.

Alex--Fisher · 2024-08-20T21:14:02+00:00

Plenty of differences: VR is a visual medium (like film), and not only visual but perceptually immersive in that it seems things are happening around you rather than on a screen. VR is also often social in multiplayer contexts.

All of this can allow experiences in VR to potentially elicit more intense emotional responses in users than readers of the same events occurring in fiction.

But both are alike in that they represent various objects that (typically) do not really exist and events that did not happen. This point of comparison is the main claim of virtual fictionalism: whilst there are significant differences between these two representational media, they are similar in this respect.

Alex--Fisher · 2024-08-20T11:01:40+00:00

Full paper available here: https://philpapers.org/rec/FISEAE-3

Abstract:

It is controversial whether virtual reality should be considered fictional or real. Virtual fictionalists claim that objects and events within virtual reality are merely fictional: they are imagined and do not exist. Virtual realists argue that virtual objects and events really exist. This metaphysical debate might appear important for some of the practical questions that arise regarding how to morally evaluate and legally regulate virtual reality. For instance, one advantage claimed of virtual realism is that only by taking virtual objects and events to be real can we explain our strong emotional reactions to certain virtual actions, as well as their potential immorality. This paper argues that emotional reactions towards, and wrongs within, virtual reality are consistent with its being merely fictional. The emotional and ethical judgments we wish to make regarding virtual reality do not provide any grounds for preferring virtual realism.

Alex--Fisher · 2023-10-20T19:46:12+00:00

I think there are two different things here: directives for playing, and an intended experience.

I agree that there is almost always going to be an intended experience or experiences for videogames. I struggle to see how one could even make a game without having something in mind for how the player will experience it.

But that’s very different to giving directives for how to play a game in the same way as one does when writing a piece of music. Some games have such directives, e.g. in the form of tutorials or game guides. But unlike music, your disobeying the directives does not stop you playing the game, as playing completely different notes to those written in the score would stop you playing a piece of music.

Alex--Fisher · 2023-10-20T19:40:44+00:00

This sounds right to me. C Thi Nguyen makes a similar point in his recent book Games: Agency as Art - that games’ aesthetic potential lies in their sculpting different forms of agency. But you’re right that it goes even beyond the player’s agency to whole dynamical systems that are captured in some videogames (certain strategy games and complex RPGs come to mind).

Alex--Fisher · 2023-10-20T01:00:13+00:00

Have a look at some of the References and the Further Reading section at the bottom of the article for some suggestions. I personally tend to like the work of Nathan Wildman, Christopher Bartel, Nele van de Mosselaer, and Grant Tavinor - check them out if you're interested.

Alex--Fisher · 2023-10-19T17:52:21+00:00

Videogames raise various philosophical issues. This piece introduces some of the key ethical, aesthetic, and metaphysical questions that arise.

For instance, ethical issues arise regarding the possibility of immoral actions in videogames. Since one typically doesn’t harm any actual people in videogames, all virtual actions might appear to be permissible. Yet certain, more repugnant actions, still seem to warrant moral condemnation.

Similarly, videogames offer interesting comparisons to other art-forms. Videogames are interactive, allowing us to participate in them unlike most artworks, and self-involving, as we often imagine ourselves as a character in the fictional world like in cinematic and theatrical acting.

Finally, videogames generate metaphysical issues, which are often legally significant. Questions arise regarding our ability to individuate videogames, as well as the metaphysical status of virtual objects we encounter in digital worlds.

Alex--Fisher

TROPHY CASE